By Eisen Teo

EVEN at the age of 66, my friend James refuses to sit out the rest of his days quietly at home.

The energetic retiree counts assembling computers, skydiving and backpacking as some of his hobbies.

More importantly, he is also a time portal into the past. A simple conversation with him reveals a side of Singapore I never knew existed.

Three years ago, James brought me to a crumbling coffee shop at the junction of Armenian and Loke Yew Street for lunch.

There was a stench from the uncovered drain and the chairs were rickety. But the char kway teow was awesome.

What made it so good?

'Experience,' James said, pointing to the sweaty, middle-aged chef whipping up plate after plate. 'He took over this business from his father. He's been cooking since he was a small boy.'

James soon became nostalgic, and I was content just to sit back and listen.

'This was once Tao Nan School, the first Chinese school to teach in Mandarin instead of a dialect,' he said, gesturing across the street at what is now the Peranakan Museum.

'And that,' he added, pointing to the red-brick Substation centre for the arts, 'was where I once worked as a clerk.'

'You worked for The Substation?' I asked.

'It was a power substation in the 1960s and 1970s,' James said.

In those days, the national power grid was still struggling to keep up the electricity supply to new HDB flats, he revealed. Power outages were frequent, and he was in charge of manning the phones when that occurred, handling his fair share of short fuses.

'It was a thankless task,' he said. 'But someone had to do it.'

We have since drifted apart, but that lunch chat sticks in my mind, not just because of the delicious chow.

With all the talk of preserving our local architecture for future generations, we have overlooked something crucial - the need to pass on memories, not through static exhibits, but through interaction with our elders.

Whether they are parents or friends like James, they can tell us what has changed in this country and keep us emotionally connected to it.

I visited Armenian Street again last week. The coffee shop was boarded up and torn down to make way for new offices. The chef that once wowed my taste buds was nowhere to be found.

When I called James and told him, he sighed: 'What to do? Such is life. Buildings and places disappear at the blink of an eye.'

I am grateful to him for sharing with me a tiny slice of Singapore's past.

I cannot wait to lunch with him again.

Eisen Teo, 24, is an honours-year history student at the National University of Singapore

This article was first published in The Straits Times on July 21, 2008.